


i never saw you coming (and i'll never be the same)

by scullymuldrs



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Identity Issues, Introspection, M/M, Patrick Brewer is Gay, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:20:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29851083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullymuldrs/pseuds/scullymuldrs
Summary: If Patrick’s being completely honest with himself, David isn’t the first man he’s ever been attracted to. However, David is the first man he’s ever let himself feel attracted to.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, past Patrick Brewer/Rachel - Relationship
Comments: 12
Kudos: 128





	i never saw you coming (and i'll never be the same)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was originally written almost exactly a year ago and i had posted it on here, but then i had Anxiety and decided to take it down. but today i shared it with a few friends who convinced me it was good enough to repost it, so here we are. thank you to ellie, jenna, cris, and cj for the encouragement!!
> 
> title is from state of grace by taylor swift because well, of course it is

If Patrick’s being completely honest with himself, David isn’t the first man he’s ever been attracted to. However, David is the first man he’s ever let himself feel attracted to.

He’s not sure he can exactly pinpoint the first boy he ever had a crush on. He does however, remember the first girl he pretended to like, when he was hit with the overwhelming feeling of being different from the rest of his friends. It was around grade 6, when his friends were discussing what girls were cute while kicking a soccer ball around. All their faces turned to him, expectantly, and oh he realized, he’s supposed to say someone.

“Katie,” he blurts out, because she’s the first girl that comes to mind, and he does like Katie, she’s nice and funny and also likes baseball. And the other boys agree that Katie is cute, and Patrick feels the tension leave his shoulders, a sense of relief that he chose right. It’s not until years later that he realizes just how wrong he was.

When he’s fourteen he’s asked by his hockey teammates about if he’s a ‘butt or boobs’ kind of guy while in the locker room, because they’re fourteen and all his friends are now obsessed with girls, so Patrick follows their lead, agreeing whenever someone points out a ‘hot’ girl. No one notices that he’s never the one to make the first comment.

He responds “Butt,” because honestly, he’s never seen the attraction of breasts. There’s an ensuing argument about what the ‘correct’ answer is, while no one, including Patrick, notices his gaze lingering on his teammates thighs.

Patrick is sixteen when he has his first vivid sex dream about a man. He wakes up a mess, both literally and mentally. The man in his dream had been faceless, but the feeling, the intensity, feels so vivid, so real. He can’t get it out of his head all day. Does this make him gay? But he’s not gay, he likes girls. Maybe only a handful, but still. A dream is just a dream, it doesn’t mean anything necessarily. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, Patrick knows that and believes that. But one sex dream doesn’t make him gay. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

He never tells anyone about his dream, because saying it outloud makes it real and real is terrifying. So, he pushes it down deep and refuses to acknowledge it. If he ignores it long enough, it will go away. Lock it up Brewer.

Three months later he asks Rachel out for their first date. They’ve been friends for years and he knows she likes him. He likes her too, she’s pretty and nice and they know each other well. And he can’t think of a reason not to date her, really. And maybe, he’s trying to prove something to himself, but he doesn’t acknowledge that.

So he dates Rachel and it’s nice, he likes having someone to spend time with. He likes that his mother is thrilled and so is his dad. He likes that he makes Rachel happy. And dating Rachel at first, it’s fun. Really it just feels the same as being friends with her, just an expectation of kissing her. Kissing Rachel feels weird, but Patrick assumes that that’s just kissing, it’s weird to mash your lips together with another person. Dating Rachel is easy in a sense, because he knows what’s expected of him. Patrick’s always excelled at meeting expectations, at school and at home. He likes teachers that clearly lay out what they want for projects, he likes that his parents are very clear with what they want from him, and Rachel’s the same.

Things with Rachel go from easy to complicated very quickly, because Rachel wants more physically and Patrick panics. This leads to their first breakup, which only lasts for two weeks before Rachel decides they should get back together and Patrick agrees, because why wouldn’t he. Eventually he does sleep with Rachel, because it’ll make her happy and Patrick can’t really figure out why he’s been hesitating, and it’s fine, but he feels like he’s been lied to about how good sex is. 

Rachel and him try to do long distance while they’re both at separate universities and they make it a year and a half before they call it off. While they’re broken up, Patrick tries to date some other girls he meets at school, but it doesn’t feel right with any of them either. He sleeps with one of the girls, convinced maybe he’ll enjoy sex with another girl besides Rachel. It doesn’t, he still feels the same, so maybe he just doesn’t enjoy sex the same way other people do.

He finishes university and feels a little bit lost, not quite sure what he wants to do with his business degree, so he moves back home and gets an apartment and a job. And then he runs into Rachel, who also moved back home and somehow they fall back into their old habits. An old habit is really the best way to describe his relationship with Rachel because he’s really just going through the motions, the expectations, just the way he always has. 

They break up again, though it only lasts a few months before they get back together. Patrick is the one to initiate it that time. “What are you looking for?” one of his buddies asks him as they drink beers at the bar after work and Patrick desperately wishes he knew the answer to that question. He keeps waiting for it to feel right, not just fine, but maybe it never will. Maybe he’s waiting for a feeling that will never come; maybe this is just what love feels like.

They get back together and it lasts long enough this time that Rachel starts dropping hints about wanting to get married. So he proposes, because that’s what Rachel wants and his parents want and what he should want. They’ve been together for years and he’s never found anything that feels like how he thinks it should, so yet again he follows the expectations. Rachel says yes, of course, and is thrilled and Patrick wonders if his fiance should be able to see through the fake smile on his face.

The engagement only lasts about a month before he realizes he can’t do this. They’re having dinner with his parents and his mom says something about grandkids in passing and it hits him. They’ve never discussed kids, hell they’ve barely discussed what being engaged means, what they want in the future. Once again, he’s meeting people’s expectations about what his life is supposed to look like.

Except now these expectations feel like they’re strangling him, like he’s trapped. What once felt like guidelines in high school for how to survive, a map for when he was feeling so lost, now feel like they’re choking him. Because once him and Rachel have kids, he knows he’s never leaving, that’ll be game over and the thought terrifies him. And he realizes that maybe he’s never been fine in this relationship and he knows he’s never been happy. Not fitting into expectations unnerves him but it hits him that shaping himself to fit these expectations, making himself into something he knows deep down he isn’t, terrifies him even more.

He finally works up the courage to break things off with Rachel for a final time a week later. Rachel doesn’t seem surprised. She’s upset, but she keeps saying ‘a break’ and shakes her head when he tells her he can’t do this anymore. She’s expecting the same as before, that they’ll break up and get back together but Patrick can feel it in his bones that this really is the last time. It makes him sad, because he does love Rachel, just not in the way she wants him to, the way he tried for so many years to force himself to. He tells his parents and his friends and while they’re all supportive, he can tell they’re expecting them to get back together.

His hometown isn’t that small, not really, but the community is small enough that he runs into people he knows or that know his parents. There’s always this shadow of expectation of who he’s supposed to be, that these people already have an idea in their minds about who he is.

It makes him miss university because there had been a certain amount of freedom there. There had been a few people he knew from high school, but he could have started new. He regrets now not trying things, not using that time to see who he was as a person. Instead he’s tried to fit the expectations he knew awaited him at home and that’s when it hits him, he needs to leave this town.

Because no matter what, as long as he’s here, there is going to be this shadow of himself following him around and he hates it. As long as that shadows there, he’s going to feel like he’s letting people down by not meeting these expectations they have for him and maybe, for the first time, he’s realizing that’s not fair to him.

So, he uses google maps and searches for a town when he finds Elmdale. It’s a six hour drive away from his home town according to google, which is just far enough to escape. He looks on Indeed for job listings in the area and finds a man named Ray looking to hire someone to do some business management for him and his many, many businesses. Patrick shoots him an email and waits.

Ray responds to him alarmingly fast, clearly thrilled to have someone interested. He asks Patrick many questions and Patrick explains that he’ll be new to the area and hasn’t found a place to live yet. Ray offers his spare bedroom and Patrick thinks, what the hell. This isn’t going to be forever, the plan is to stay in Ray’s small town, just outside of Elmdale until he figures out what he’s looking for.

Ray does a skype interview with Patrick and it goes well, to say the least. Ray seems thrilled to have Patrick coming to town and so Patrick quits his job, packs up his life in his car, says goodbye to his parents, and hits the road.

The six hour drive to Schitt’s Creek, the small town where Ray lives, gives Patrick time to think, but he surprises himself. He’s scared and confused and a little bit lost still, but something about it feels a little bit like freedom.

-

He adjusts to life in Schitt’s Creek relatively quickly. The job with Ray is good, he’s a friendly man, a little too friendly maybe and doesn’t really understand privacy, but he’s nice and the job is a good distraction. He relaxes into a routine and it’s not that different than before, but he feels a little bit lighter.

Then David Rose walks into his life and everything changes.

Instantly, Patrick is drawn to him. Something about David captivates him and he can’t stop thinking about him all day. He grins like an idiot at David’s voicemails as he listens to them all and he can’t stop teasing David, despite the fact that they barely know each other. He decides he’s going to deliver his business license in person, because he needs to see David again. There’s this magnet pull he feels towards him, that he can’t explain because he’s never felt like this before.

It’s not until one night he’s lying in bed in the dark that it hits him. Night has always given Patrick this weird sense of security, there’s things he’ll think in the comfort of the dark that he won’t during the day. It’s one of the only times he’ll let himself be vulnerable, even with himself. He’s thinking about David and suddenly he thinks ‘I want to kiss him’ and oh.

And for once, he doesn’t push it down, he doesn’t lock it up. This time, he lets himself feel it, feel the fact that he is most definitely attracted to David. He doesn’t just want to be friends with David, he wants more. He wants to kiss David and hold his hand and make him laugh. He wants to be around him all the time, he wants to be intoxicated with him.

Oh.

He slips in and out of sleep that entire night, never staying asleep for long. Finally, as his phone blinks that it’s 5:43am at him, he decides to go for a hike.

Ray had given him a book of hikes after he mentioned that he liked them. He had always liked hiking, but Rachel hadn’t been very into it so he never went much before. He’s tried a few times now, but hasn’t found one he loves yet so today he tries a new one.

There’s nobody on the trail of course, he’s the only one who’s up and hiking at 6am. As he makes his way along the trail, he can’t help but let his mind wander to David, to the feeling he gets when he’s around him. It’s that feeling that everyone else has described, the feeling of his heart racing, an unexplainable attraction. Desire. And it’s not just physical, though he knows now that for maybe the first time in his life, he is letting himself feel true physical attraction. He’s felt it before, but he’s always pushed past it and ignored it. But now accompanying the physical attraction, is romantic desire.

He knows now he was never in love with Rachel. Not that he’s in love with David, because he still barely knows him, they’re just business partners getting to know each other. But he wants David in a way that he’s never wanted anyone else before. And it scares him, but in a good way. He didn’t know that he could feel like this.

He can’t help but to get closer to David, to work on the store with him. And his idea for the store is good and David’s creative and meticulous. Patrick hasn’t hated any of his previous jobs but working with David on the store makes him feel alive, makes him feel fulfilled. 

The hiking continues, at least a couple mornings a week. The fresh air and the movement help him think. When he reaches the top, he takes time to take in the view. Somehow at the top of the mountain, everything feels so clear. He likes David, a lot. When they hugged after the store opening, it’d felt so right. He had felt that nervous excitement everyone has always talked about and he realizes he’s never felt it before. With Rachel he’d always been nervous, but it’d been a nervous fear that he’d forced himself to ignore. He wants to ask David out. But the new problem is, while he’s now untangled his own feelings, he has to worry about if David feels the same, which is a whole other realm of anxiety. 

But he takes a risk and asks David out on his birthday. Except, apparently he’s not good at asking people out because then Stevie shows up. Patrick does his best to hide his disappointment, tries to ignore the sharp pain that stabs at his heart. But then David opens his gift and the look on his face when he says “This is not nothing,” tells Patrick that maybe David feels the same way he does. He thinks Stevie figures it out because she makes some excuse to leave, a knowing look in her eye.

All night he wants to kiss David, wants to lean across the table and close the distance between them. The conversation comes so easily, they tease each other and flirt endlessly, or at least Patrick is pretty sure they’re flirting. He drives David back to the motel and has to stop himself from reaching over to hold David’s hand while he does.

He’s trying to gather up the nerve to kiss David, because he really doesn’t want tonight to end without knowing what it feels like to press his lips against David’s, but despite the earlier confusion, David is the one who leans across to kiss Patrick. And oh, that’s what you’re supposed to feel when you kiss someone. Patrick can’t believe he’s been missing this feeling his entire life.

As he drives back to Ray’s, he can’t stop smiling. Kissing David didn’t just feel fine, it felt right, it felt good. Kissing David had felt like freedom. He knows he won’t get much sleep tonight, his whole body is still tingling with electricity, and he’ll need to go for a hike in the morning. But for once he feels like he understands himself, like a fog has been lifted, and yes, they’ve only kissed once, but Patrick has a feeling that this is the beginning of something he’s waited his entire life for.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to come chat with me on twitter, i'm @schwifts there


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